Health care industry

QALYs and HYEs: under what conditions are they equivalent?

Article Abstract:

Quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) and healthy-years equivalents (HYEs) are used as aids in making technical and value judgments of the trade-off between the quality of life gained and the quantity of life gained in health care decisions. It was argued that QALYs and HYEs are related, but there are certain restrictions on the individual's preference structure for both HYEs and QALYs to give identical results. An alternative index which combines the advantages of QALYs and HYEs is proposed.

There has been much debate about the superiority of the theoretical properties of the healthy-years equivalents (HYEs) over those of quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs). Both HYEs and QALYs are used as aids in health care resource allocation decisions. It was argued that the validity of the cardinal utility function of either HYE or QALY depends on the specific conditions of risk-neutrality.

The myth of the HYE

Article Abstract:

The claim that the healthy-years equivalent (HYE) is not superior to the quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) as a measure of quality of life in health care resource allocation was supported. It was argued that the two-stage HYE procedure is not essentially different from the time trade-off method of QALYs. An illustrative example is presented to prove this assertion.